About Emotions

Emotions are subjective experiences that include cognitive evaluation and physiological arousal (Haviland-Jones et al., 2016). They are influenced by an individual’s mood, circumstances, and interpersonal interactions. Emotions manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including happiness, fear, and wrath. Surprisingly, emotions drive cognitive behavior and activities. Emotions are also expressed through verbal and nonverbal interactions. As a result, this paper will go through how emotions are felt and communicated, as well as how emotions influence cognitive activity and behavior.

Furthermore, emotions are accompanied by physiological arousal and are influenced by areas of the brain and limbic system such as the amygdala (Haviland-Jones et al., 2016). Primary emotions are experienced inform of fear, disgust, happiness, anger, and sadness among others. Emotions in psychology are expressed in observable nonverbal and verbal behaviors that converse an internal state (Haviland-Jones et al., 2016). Body languages such as crossed legs, hands on the cheek and rubbing eyes communicate a lot on a person’s emotions. Additionally, facial expressions such as scowling and behaviors like laughing express an individual’s feelings.

Emotions play a critical role in motivating cognitive activity to achieve a particular objective. For instance, amygdala gets information and sends it to the cortex where stimuli are entirely processed as something fine or a hazard (Haviland-Jones et al., 2016). The brain processes information faster than the cortex hence an individual responds emotionally according to the information sent to the brain. If amygdala shows something negative, the person’s emotions are evoked, and they react unnecessarily. Also, each emotion portrays a given behavior. For example, fear emotion has an objective of escape or avoidance behaviors.

In summary, emotions experienced inform of happiness, anger, surprise among others are expressed in verbal and nonverbal communication. For instance, facial expression, as well as body language, are significantly used to express emotions. Additionally, emotions motivate cognitive activity as well as the behaviors through various responses by the brain depending on the information sent to the brain. Remarkably, emotions provide information on stimuli appraisal which causes stimuli cognitive assessment (Haviland-Jones et al., 2016).

Reference

Haviland-Jones, J. M., Lewis, M., & Barrett, L. F. (2016). Handbook of emotions. New York, N.Y: Guilford.